the nearest chair. He looked at Margaret as if she might be an angel
holding open the portal to a kingdom in the sky. He looked and wondered
and admired, and then he looked back to his glorified old wife again in
wonder.

Jasper Kemp shut the door, and the company dropped back into their
places. Margaret, because of her deep embarrassment, and a kind of
inward trembling that had taken possession of her, announced another
hymn.

It was a solemn little service, quite unique, with a brief, simple
prayer and an expository reading of the story of the blind man from the
sixth chapter of John. The men sat attentively, their eyes upon her face
as she read; but Pop Wallis sat staring at his wife, an awed light upon
his scared old face, the wickedness and cunning all faded out, and only
fear and wonder written there.

In the early dawning of the pink-and-silver morning Margaret went back
to her work, Gardley riding by her side, and Bud riding at a discreet
distance behind, now and then going off at a tangent after a stray
cottontail. It was wonderful what good sense Bud seemed to have on
occasion.

The horse that Margaret rode, a sturdy little Western pony, with nerve
and grit and a gentle common sense for humans, was to remain with her in
Ashland, a gift from the men of the bunk-house. During the week that
followed Archie Forsythe came riding over with a beautiful shining
saddle-horse for her use during her stay in the West; but when he went
riding back to the ranch the shining saddle-horse was still in his
train, riderless, for Margaret told him that she already had a horse of
her own. Neither had Margaret accepted the invitation to the Temples'
for the next week-end. She had other plans for the Sabbath, and that
week there appeared on all the trees and posts about the town, and on
the trails, a little notice of a Bible class and vesper-service to be
held in the school-house on the following Sabbath afternoon; and so
Margaret, true daughter of her minister-father, took up her mission in
Ashland for the Sabbaths that were to follow; for the school-board had
agreed with alacrity to such use of the school-house.

CHAPTER XXII

Now when it became noised abroad that the new teacher wanted above all
things to purchase a piano, and that to that end she was getting up a
wonderful Shakespeare play in which the scholars were to act upon a
stage set with tree boughs after the manner of some new kind of players,
the whole